One of the freshmen jumped up from the card table where they were playing Sergeant Major with Alistair.
“Nicky! You didn’t tell us you knew so many famous people!”
Alistair turned and rose to greet me with a polite kiss.
“Nicky my love, sorry to barge in on you like this. Just flew in from London. I have a business proposition for you.”
“Business proposition. For me.” I put down my book bag and reached in a pocket for a cigarette. I hadn’t even heard from him in a couple of months. The missives from Biggleswood had stopped around Christmas time and I’d only heard from him once since then—a postcard from someplace in Spain. I had no idea what could be going on.
“I know nothing about business, Alistair. I’m more of an arts person.”
Alistair lit my cigarette with an elegant lighter not unlike the one he’d given me.
“Exactly,” he said. “So how would you like to work on a film this summer? The Vast Inland Sea. Guido Malatesta is directing. Starring Delia Kent and Sam Calhoun.”
The freshmen started to squeal at the mention of Sam’s name.
I took a long drag on my cigarette.
“You want me to be in a movie?”
“Not be in the movie. Work for Delia while she’s filming. She wants to bring Pandora, because Sir Thomas will be in New York, but she needs a nanny. You know Pandora adores you.”
I kept my cool and took another hit of nicotine.
“You flew all the way from London to ask me to work as a nanny? You do know I’m about to graduate from Bryn Mawr with a degree in English Literature?”
“Yes, I do. And I also know a lot of the filming is going to be done in some unenticing place west of the Hudson.” He waved a hand and started to intone with ironic drama, “‘somewhere in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic roll on under the night.’”
He looked around to make sure the freshmen hadn’t missed his Fitzgerald quote.
“And…?” I said.
“And it’s going to be awful. The middle of some godforsaken California desert. I can’t survive it without you. Pandora can’t either.” He gave me a hug.
“You want me to give up my academic career and become a domestic servant?”
“Only for the summer.” He kissed my cheek. “Say you’ll do it?”
“Do it! Do it!” the freshmen squealed.
I didn’t give him an answer, but I let him take me out for a drink. He was driving a rental car—a prosaic Ford this time, not the fancy TR3, which must have been a rental too. At the bar I got him to confess he wasn’t in the area exclusively to see me. He had things in storage in his old apartment building he had to deal with.
“But that’s just a minor thing.” He grabbed my hand in a dramatic show of sincerity. “You’re the main reason I’m here, Nick. I meant all those things I wrote to you. Every word. I know you think I’m a fraud, and you’re right. But I’m an honest fraud. You’re the only one who understands that.”
He reached into an inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a crumpled letter in a familiar envelope. “I keep your letter with me—always. It’s like you ripped off my skin and saw into my soul. It’s not flattering, but it’s true.” He tapped the letter with his index finger. “Truth. That’s what’s in there. You tell me the truth, Nicky. You’re the only person who ever has.”
This surge of emotion would have won me over once, and I wasn’t entirely immune to the lure of the Hollywood glamour the freshmen had been squealing about. Even more convincing was his report that Pandora had been desperately asking for me. But I knew this was really about Alistair’s ability to work that concierge “magic” he’d learned from his mother. He was now officially Delia’s “business manager.” His job was to make all her arrangements to make her U.S. trip run smoothly, and hiring me as a nanny was one of the arrangements.
I drank two gin and tonics and ate a whole bowl of peanuts before I told him no. I said I appreciated the thought, but Dad had a job lined up for me at Weidner Library for the summer, and I was looking forward to a low-key couple of months before I started my graduate program at Harvard.
He gave me a strange smile and took me back to the dorm with a minimum of fuss. Amazing. He seemed to have matured. And I had, too. I kissed him on the cheek and told him how lovely it had been to see him and asked to be remembered to Pandora and her parents.
He took a business card from his wallet and told me I could call the number of his service and reach him any time if I changed my mind.
I knew I wouldn’t. The freshmen would be heartbroken, but I was rather proud I’d finally been able to withstand Alistair’s manipulations.
Not that I was really looking forward to a summer alternating between dusty books and Mary Margaret’s tchotckes. But the money from the summer job would help me get an apartment by the time classes started in the fall.
Mary Margaret and Dad were coming by car to see me graduate, so I spent the last month whittling down my things so they’d fit in the trunk of Dad’s old Impala. There wouldn’t be much room for my stuff amidst the toilet rolls. I kept a few college papers and my nicer clothes and dumped almost everything else. I did keep Sandburg, and the copy of Slaughterhouse Five Billy Bradford gave me. When I came to Alistair’s letters, I debated with myself a few minutes, then dumped them. I decided here would be lots more where they came from.
By graduation day, I had everything packed and I was ready to go back to Cambridge and normal life. Most seniors’ parents came the day before, for the traditional garden party with the faculty, but my dad and Mary Margaret were going to stop in New Jersey to visit some of her relatives on the way. I didn’t really mind. I wasn’t sure how people like Lois’s parents would react to Mary Margaret, who managed to drop references to “the Lord” into every conversation.
But when they hadn’t arrived in time for a promised graduation brunch, I started to get annoyed. My dad had a habit of being late, but I’d been hoping sobriety and Mary Margaret might have cured that. And by ten-thirty, when it was time to put on my cap and gown, and they still hadn’t showed, I was seriously angry.
When the ceremony finished and everybody started packing their things into their parents’ cars and driving off into forever, I started to panic. I went back to the dorm feeling equally terrified and pissed off. Dad didn’t do much long distance driving. I had horrible visions of them splattered all over the Garden State Parkway.
Or maybe they’d simply forgotten. I called home and got one of those new answering-machine thingies. It played a recording of Mary Margaret’s chirpy voice saying she couldn’t come to the phone right now. She. Not we. Maybe that was just because Dad hated electronic stuff, but it gave me a weird feeling.
I didn’t have contact information for Mary Margaret’s relatives in New Jersey, so I called Goose Hill.
Aunt Livy answered. Her news was not good.
“Oh, dear Heaven,” she said. “Didn’t anybody phone you? Your father has fallen off the wagon. Again. That Irishwoman has thrown him out and filed for divorce. Nobody knows where he’s gone. Probably Las Vegas again. She’ll get the house, of course. He has nothing else left.”
Our house. Gone. Not only did I have a selfish, drunken idiot for a father, but I now had no home.
Aunt Livy went on in her garden-club voice.
“But you’ll be happy to know I told him your good news before he went on his binge, so at least he won’t wake up in some dive and start panicking about you the way he did last time.”
“What good news?”
“Your job with Guido Malatesta. Your uncle and I both love that film he did with Marcello Mastroianni. We’re all so happy for you. We called your father and told him right away.”
My hand started to shake. I could hardly grip the phone.
“Who—who told you that?”
“Alistair of course. He stopped by here a few weeks ago. He’s more handsome than ever, isn’t he? I hope you’ll be announcing your engagement soon. He’ll be a wonderful addition to the family.”
I hung up as politely as I could and made a panicked rummage through my purse, looking for the business card Alistair had given me. Luckily, it was still there.
I had no choice.
I couldn’t take the library job with no place to live. I probably didn’t have it anyway. Dad would have conveyed my “good news” to his friends at Wiedner. There was nothing in Cambridge for me.
I was going to spend the summer being a nanny for Delia Kent out there in the “vast obscurity” of the California desert.
Alistair had won again.